The options for banks to compete in a changing financial services landscape are to either build, buy or partner; while we have seen a number of banks build their own technology or partner with fintechs, there has yet to be significant acquisitions in the market; an article in Tearsheet highlights how few purchases banks have made and how that compares to the amount of investments in fintech companies. Source
Alexandra Villarreal O’Rourke from McGuireWoods discusses Project Catalyst and the no-action letter program from the CFPB in a Let’s Talk Payments interview; the first no-action letter was issued to Upstart, a consumer lender in the US. Source
- Remitly Raises up to $115M in Series D Funding
- RateSetter changes approach to property loan defaults
- This UK fintech is taking on big banks with business loans — and one key EU law is driving it
- Orchard to Launch Online Lending Industry Page on the Bloomberg Terminal
- LendingTree Announces Top Customer-Rated Lenders by Loan Product for Q3 2017
After turning a profit in 2016 Assetz Capital has continue that trend in the first half of 2017 by posting a seven figure pre tax profit; “We have reported considerable growth and stability over the past four years, and now that profitably has been consistently achieved in parallel to that strong growth, we continue to go from strength to strength,” said Stuart Law, CEO of Assetz Capital, to AltFi; this shows a trend in the UK of secured P2P lenders having a better track record to profit. Source.
Bitcoin has increased over 550% this year and many firms are taking an increased interest in the cryptocurrency; CME Group launching futures contracts for bitcoin is just one example; the WSJ looks at what futures contracts for bitcoin will potentially mean for the market. Source
Blockchain consortium R3 and 22 partner banks are working to build a real time cross border payments solution on Corda; the project started last year and the banks are actively providing feedback; this is occurring while R3 and former partner Ripple are involved in a legal dispute over a previous agreement. Source.
Crowdfund Insider sat down with Karen Mills at LendIt Europe 2017; Mills is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School and was previously head of the US Small Business Administration; she believes we are between two phases in the market: the banks waking up and the platforms arriving, including Alibaba, Amazon, Square etc. Source
American Banker profiles Instant Financial which was founded in 2015; the company aims to shorten the time frame to when employees get paid; using the app employees can unlock portions of their paychecks which can provide an alternative to payday loans; they recently partnered with Sutton Bank in Ohio for their US expansion. Source
The VPC Speciality Lending investment trust sold it’s exposure to Avant loans and their equity stake as it continues a move out of the sector; the fund has been shifting to a balance sheet strategy for quite some time and this is another indicator of that move; they also sold their equity exposure in Australian point of sale lender zipMoney. Source.
In an interview with Business Insider Acorns CEO Noah Kerner talked about the investment app’s success to date and how he see the company moving forward; the company has seen strong growth with 2.2 million US accounts; the app allows users to invest spare change from purchases; the focus of the future is to try to get all households with income under $100K using the app. Source.